It's all but illegal in the US too but the feedback loop of increased cost, increased regulation, increased mandates for insurance has driven up the cost enough that the baseline cost of compliance is so high that unless you're solidly in the middle class driving expired/unregistered beaters with no insurance and abandoning them to impound every now and then and/or pleading financial hardship with the courts is preferable.
And when most people running expired or no reg are just everyday working stiffs and most of them can't afford huge fines it's neither useful as a pretext for fishing nor revenue so the harassment by cops stops happening. And the rhetoric of the voting public has pretty firmly against the cops harassing the crap out of people recently too.
No amount of screeching about how these people should be stomped by the jackboot for noncompliance will make the economics of that pencil out for the state. You force these people to pay up either to the state or the insurers and they won't be able to live at their current economic level and they'll just turn right back around and be on the section 8 and welfare rolls which is probably worse for the public good. It's just a shitty situation no matter how you cut it.
And when most people running expired or no reg are just everyday working stiffs and most of them can't afford huge fines it's neither useful as a pretext for fishing nor revenue so the harassment by cops stops happening. And the rhetoric of the voting public has pretty firmly against the cops harassing the crap out of people recently too.
No amount of screeching about how these people should be stomped by the jackboot for noncompliance will make the economics of that pencil out for the state. You force these people to pay up either to the state or the insurers and they won't be able to live at their current economic level and they'll just turn right back around and be on the section 8 and welfare rolls which is probably worse for the public good. It's just a shitty situation no matter how you cut it.